


i only feel right on my knees

by freloux



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Aftercare, Dom/sub, Drugs, F/M, Identity Issues, Impact Play, Rope Bondage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 20:39:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5758045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freloux/pseuds/freloux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How can I measure up to anyone now after such a love as this?</p>
            </blockquote>





	i only feel right on my knees

He ruminates constantly. When he's by himself he's so lonely that he just needs to go somewhere, anywhere, to forget. A thirteen hour bender on a remote little planet seems like a good solution. No debates about the greater meaning of the cosmos. Just increasingly foreign substances ingested in increasingly foreign ways. He ends up with an empty head and for a few hours it's kind of blissful.

The bliss stops eventually, though. It always does. It leaves him with this full-body tiredness. He doesn't want to do this anymore. He wonders how _that_ became _this_. His own consciousness sounds suspiciously like Clara as it nags him: _What do you mean, 'this'?_

How the regeneration shuffled everything around. His own body a foreign landscape. Et cetera.

A passing alien uses all ten of her eyes to glare at him, which is when he realises that he's said all this out loud.

So he drags himself back to the TARDIS and lets himself recover. At this point it's probably not just his kidneys that are a different colour, but his liver as well. He can't stop to think about that: he is somehow reminded that it's Wednesday. On the planet that he just left, it wasn't Wednesday. They didn't have anything even remotely close to what a Wednesday could be. Just miles and miles of gritty alleyways and the constant thrash of what in a few hundred years would be called punk music.

Wednesdays on Earth, though, means Clara. He collects himself as much as he can and winces as it all leaves his system, dissipating through his skin as though it was never there. Some kind of loss as it goes. _Careful, Doctor._ Right now he has to get the TARDIS engine back up and running so he can arrive at her flat in something beginning to approach shipshape.

Clara opens the doors, wearing her disapproving face as soon as she notices his disheveled clothes, his rumpled hair. Circles him. "Look what happened to you."

"Coping mechanism."

She hits him. A small slap that's intended to be scolding. He moans softly and she steps back, surprised. Both of them are, actually. Neither of them had expected him to enjoy that. It knocks him back into himself. When she asks if she should keep going, his voice is tiny but certain as he gives his consent.

When his clothes hit the floor, he muses that there's something in there about shedding an intrinsic part of his identity. He's not completely sure. Ask Clara - she's the English teacher.

"There's - " He gestures to a cabinet in the corner. There's rope in there. Usually it's used for adjusting the airlock. Rudimentary, perhaps, it's the only thing that works for putting the TARDIS back together. Putting the Doctor back together. She loops it in reassuring cords around his wrists, securing them together behind his back. And now it all seems to fall into place.

A cautious slap at first, then harder. Skin rising red and pink.

There's a certain relief in this, for such an overcrowded mind. All he has to think about, all he has to focus on, is her and the way she stands so proudly over him. The questions that echo around him, of morality and mortality, scatter when she hits him. Two thousand years of pain. It all throbs in a fadeout to pleasure, funneled into a higher goal. He dimly remembers the depths he's been to. The absolute shambles. Here he is restored. He's used to being in charge, inspiring either dread or hope wherever he walks. Now Clara is the one quietly assertive, telling him how or where to move and redirecting him if he doesn't do it right.

He almost doesn't need the binding on his wrists - her eyes are hypnotic enough. She talks to him: how he's a blue blood Time Lord, tied up just for her. That he could be anywhere in the universe, but he's here instead.

"Yes, ma'am." Cliche, perhaps, especially in the way it comes out worshipful.

 _Hit me, hit me, hit me._ He offers himself, bending farther, just like she wants. Clara has transformed. All of this power coursing through her tiny body. She gets it all out on him, then stands back, palm still displayed. Breathing hard, she eventually drops her hand. Undoes the rope, rubs his wrists. Leads him into the medibay.

In this, as in all things, she is his carer. She's tender with him. She admires the marks and the way they feel warm to the touch. Rubs lotion into his skin and wraps him with blankets. Tells him how good he is for her, to her. Trust, that's what it is. She trusts him to show her more of herself and the universe, and he will give that to her. Give and give for as long as it takes.

She plots the course. After all, Clara can program the TARDIS herself by now. He's helpless - can only watch, can only admire. The trees here are suffused with light. He walks next to her and watches how they make her skin faintly luminous as well. He wants to touch her but isn't sure if he's allowed.

The path through the trees is lavender. It winds to nowhere in particular. His skin feels sensitive where she's struck him - a slight burn where it rubs against the fabric, under his clothes. Clara pauses and he kneels in front of her, willing. Waiting. The leaves fall around them, all of them glowing. She turns up his chin and kisses him gently. He trembles. She remains still: as always, she's the one in control.

The intensity with which she loves him - it nearly breaks both his hearts.


End file.
